Chapter 60: A Civilization in the Midst of Destruction

It's truly a pity...

Zhang Jie looked at the pool of beast king's blood that had already begun to faintly emit a rotten smell, and shook his head helplessly.

Even if the beast king's blood were even stronger, it could not escape nature's erosion.

In one and a half months, the beast king's corpse had begun to rot, and the pool of its blood also started to deteriorate, becoming unsuitable for absorption.

Even if he exerted his utmost ability to absorb it, he only managed to make the pool of blood a little thinner.

However, the fact that it remained unchanged for one and a half months is already astonishing; one believes nature will soon completely digest this dead beast king.

Many scavengers have already gathered here; a whale fall brings life to myriad creatures.

Correspondingly, Zhang Jie's martial dao realm also received a great boost.

The third stage of martial dao, 'Qi Blood Refining Spirit,' likewise has corresponding realm adjectives: Transforming Blood, Refining Essence, Transforming Origin, Returning to the Void, Refining Spirit.

The same five minor realms; after one and a half months of arduous cultivation, Zhang Jie has passed Transforming Blood and reached the Refining Essence realm.

This stage will be the realm with the greatest consumption of qi and blood, requiring the conversion of internal qi and blood into essence-blood, continually refined; this process naturally consumes a large amount of qi and blood.

Perhaps ordinary cultivators can only obtain qi and blood from food and daily training, but Zhang Jie is different.

Zhang Jie is confident that, with the beast blood's aid, he will surely complete Refining Essence within two years and reach the Transforming Origin realm.

"Weiniya! Get ready to leave!!!"

"Oh!!!"

Zhang Jie looked around, but did not see Weiniya's figure; only a distant 'oh' came from afar.

Soon, Weiniya, with leaves atop her head, ran back; Zhang Jie instantly knew this little thing had climbed a tree again to steal signal and play on her phone.

The past month or so has left Weiniya terribly bored; before, there had been arduous training and a boxing match morning and evening, making her days fairly fulfilling.

But now that she's idle, Weiniya doesn't know what to do; before she could hug her phone and mindlessly enjoy it, but now the phone is unusable, leaving her extremely bored.

But somehow she discovered that, when she climbed to the highest tree, there was a signal of a few kilobytes; conditions were harsh, yet Weiniya persisted in climbing the tree to use her phone, the very picture of an internet-addicted girl.

"Weiniya, you've been a bit lax this past month."

Zhang Jie spoke sternly, like a strict and responsible teacher.

"How is the sword technique I taught you practicing? Let me see."

Weiniya attempted to cosplay Xiaoanchun, but did it half-heartedly; Zhang Jie picked her up and threw her onto the clearing, making her demonstrate the sword technique.

Finally, after some hemming and hawing, Weiniya reluctantly grabbed a branch and began to swing it.

This feeling again brought her back to when she was learning boxing; after an awkward bout of sword practice, Weiniya finally got her wish and ate a chestnut from Zhang Jie.

Zhang Jie picked up another branch from the ground, stood before Weiniya, ignored her aggrieved little gaze, and spoke sternly.

"Come, draw your sword; I'll teach you again."

"After lecturing Weiniya, you set off once more; your first destination is the sea often mentioned in the internet and history, an age long past, where many spend their lives confined within walled districts, never seeing beyond the prosperous cities to that beautiful, vast world."

"But you are different; you were born not a caged bird, you yearn for the sky, so you learned to fly, flying out of that confining prison that muddles a lifetime, and the world you will behold will be broader, your life more splendid than others."

"You and Weiniya passed through towering jungles where countless giant beasts lay dormant, through the ruins of ancient civilizations' cities, following the wide roads left by predecessors, continually advancing from distant inland to the seaside."

"The four words 'vast sea, boundless sky' have become tangible here; countless enormous seabirds forage on the beach."

"Because humans have remained hidden behind walls for too long, the outside has long become a playground for wildlife: cat-eye snails larger than a face, arm-thick clams, crabs half a person's height, and various gigantic creatures, leaving you and Weiniya in awe."

"You and Weiniya enjoyed an extremely delicious seafood beach feast; just one bite made you fall in love with the taste of these sea creatures, and having carefully studied everything from the old era, you naturally also knew something about its cuisine."

"You tasted the flavor of giant sea urchin, you tasted the flavor of charcoal-grilled octopus tentacles, you tasted the flavor of blanched lobster."

"Weiniya proposed wanting to go on a deep-sea adventure, but unfortunately your bodies were not yet capable of diving too deep, so you had no choice but to give up; you secretly vowed that someday you would surely dive into the deep sea to witness the vast underwater world."

At night, after finishing a day's cultivation, Zhang Jie exhaled deeply, rose from the beach, and gazed upon the endless beautiful sea.

"What lies beyond the sea?"

Zhang Jie couldn't help but voice this question in his heart, constantly turning it over in his mind, unable to dispel it.

He then looked up at the sky, where stars twinkled.

Without the city's light pollution, the night sky now reveals the vast, brilliant Milky Way, each star generously radiating its own light.

"What lies beyond the starry sky...?"

Zhang Jie belatedly realized that, as the bird that had flown into the sky, he seemed to have escaped the cage, arriving at a more expansive world, only to find himself in an even larger cage.

He once again began to yearn for the world beyond the starry sky...

"Forget it, what's the point of thinking so much..."

Zhang Jie gave a light chuckle, then kicked with his foot at Weiniya, who was buried in the sand snoring loudly.

"Get up, go back to sleep in the vehicle; it's easy to catch a chill outside."

"Mm... okay, teacher..."

Weiniya brushed off the sand on her body and obediently followed Zhang Jie toward the RV.

Before returning to the RV, Zhang Jie seemed to sense something; he finally turned and glanced at the vast starry sky, everything as usual.

He took a deep breath, then slowly departed.

Little did he know, tens of light-years beyond Zhang Jie's line of sight, a prosperous world was silently being destroyed.

What a scene it is: prosperous cities, countless maggot-worm-like creatures greedily gnawing at the earth's surface, their mouthparts like an incessantly rotating grinder, nothing able to enter whole into their massive maws.

Even more desperate is the vast, abyssal maw on the horizon, as deep as a black hole, with countless extraterrestrial weapons attacking it desperately, yet no matter what, they cannot halt its advance.

Above all cities, endless darkness continually shrouds, obscuring the stars' light and likewise blocking the starry sky on the opposite side.

The enormous upper and lower jaws gradually envelop the entire planet, slowly closing; countless creatures surge from the darkness, while those massive jaws easily crush the planet into fragments, as those beings devour everything completely.

A world, after hundreds of millions of years of reproduction, countless evolutions, innumerable migrations, a brilliant civilization, a civilization not yet having reached the stars, thus vanishes forever from this world.